Building basics

Fujairah National Group (FNG) has deployed state-of-the-art infrastructure in its datacentre to support the growing base of its various businesses.

Fujairah National Group (FNG) has deployed state-of-the-art infrastructure in its datacentre to support the growing base of its various businesses.

There are not many industries that the Fujairah National Group (FNG) is not a part of. One of the largest conglomerates in the emirate, FNG runs businesses that deal in everything from real estate and education, to shipping and process-related functions.

With an ever-expanding base of enterprises, the group requires a strong IT team to support its activities, and this is exactly what Syed Anisuddin, IT manager of the group, and the ten member technology team provide it with.

Since we were implementing the new ERP system across all businesses we had to replace our aging hardware and also build a robust hardware platform to run the business. The SLA ensures less than four hours of downtime annually.

"We are a very process driven team. We believe that the use of best practices, international standards and state-of-the-art technologies can help the IT team perform its services to the business in the most efficient manner without any unnecessary hassles," states Anisuddin.

As part of providing services to the more than 30 businesses under FNG, Anisuddin looks over not only the primary datacentre located at the group's headquarters, but also a second datacentre located at the Amwal Brokerage Centre.

Though the brokerage is a part of FNG, its special requirements as a financial institution demanded the establishment of a separate datacentre. The datacentre of the brokerage, which was set up in late 2006, runs largely on a Dell and EMC environment, along with tight security.

At the headquarters, the IT team is responsible for everything from software to networking and hardware maintenance.

"As the set of companies grew, we realised some years back that we would need a strong ERP solution to support the transactions that the business demanded at the speed that was required. Moreover, demands were on the increase from many business users who required a way to connect remotely to applications they use. Considering all of these requirements and issues, and the several solutions that were available in the market, we decided to implement Microsoft's Great Plains," says Anisuddin.

Following this ERP deployment, FNG's management and executives were provided access to applications on the go, and the capability to monitor the business wherever in the world they were. Apart from this, general processes and normal operations inside FNG's companies were greatly speeded-up due to the additional capacities provided by the application.

This crucial investment in a strong ERP platform necessitated upgrades at the infrastructure level as well.

"Since we were implementing the new ERP system across all businesses we had to replace our aging hardware and also build a robust hardware platform to run the business. The SLA (service level agreement) between business and IT was that access to applications would be ensured with less than four hours of downtime in a year," says Anisuddin.

Having decided to invest in an end-to-end infrastructure solution, FNG began looking for the vendor that would best fit their needs.

"After the ERP application we designed a qualification matrix to assess vendors. Around 40% is based on the vendor's ability to demonstrate their technical capabilities about the product and how well they can map the solutions to the diverse business of FNG, 20% was for project management and another 20% was allotted to the vendor's reputation in the market in terms of delivery and support. The remaining 20% is for completeness of solution with the price perspective in mind," explains Anisuddin.

After putting vendors through the matrix, and assessing the specific nature of their end-to-end solutions, FNG finally decided on using HP blade servers, which are supported by HP storage for its primary datacentre.

"We picked Al Futtaim Technologies to implement the solutions. They have been working with us for five to six years. With Al Futtaim, and a turnkey solution, we did not worry about interaction and support from different vendors," points out Anisuddin.

Fujairah National Group has been one such unique group of organizations which has a diversified pool of business operations catering to the needs of customers and serving the people of the emirate.
I am happy to know FNG is moving forward in embarking into the technology world with enterprise system implementation roll outs across all its different business entities which will help in adaptation of the best practices in the industry. I wish continued success to the Mr. Anis & IT team,all business units and wishing FNG with more accolades in the years to come.

Enterprise Resource Planning(ERP) Solutions is need of the todays complex multi-product global businesses. I have gone through the ERP implemtation and applications in FNG which I hope would focus the fulfilment of CRM (Customer Relationship Management), SCM (Supply Chain Management including Foreign Trade), Planning and Development in collaborations and alliances, solutions to all accounting and financial analysis and effective Corporate Governance. I congratulate the IT manager and his team for the excellent IT services
Congrats to the IT Manager Mr. Syed Anis Uddin and his team of FNG
From:
Prof. Mohammed Akbar Ali Khan,
Professor of Commerce & Chairman,
Department of Commerce,
Osmania University, Hyderabad.